Untitled, 1990

Untitled, 1980s and finished 1990, Paint and mixed media on wood, 144 × 144 cm

Part of a large series of paintings begun in the early 1980s, and in some cases completed in the early 1990s, these paintings explore themes intrinsically linked to the motif of the cross (as an intersection between life and death but also as an interruption of a line of continuity), the barrier or border (thus questioning the division imposed by the wall), and dissolve into abstract details of scratches and graffiti that seem to mimic spontaneous gestures on that very same surface of the separating wall.

(…) Even as the treatment of those surfaces invites an apparently weightless, optical drift, the applications of paint attests to its materiality. In some, such as Untitled (1980s, finished in 1990), the use of gesso lends them a literal heft, an assertion of volume and mass that verges on the sculptural. In others, the thick impasto anchors the field of graduated color to the support. Particularly striking are the variations in textures achieved across these works, at times shifting abruptly from sheer planes to gritty surfaces. In these respects, the worked surfaces recall the art brut of Jean Dubuffet, who, especially between the 1940s and late 1950s, granted a new prominence to materials and processes. His works, as Hal Foster argues, display a tension between the elevation of cultural production and its debasement, an oscillation that challenges stultified notions of worth and value. In the GDR, of course, the concrete was of paramount significance for it entailed the “unity of diverse aspects” associated with productive, “useful” forms of labor. By refusing resolution and keeping that shift between optical and tactile registers in play, Rehfeldt’s works unsettle those expectations of any neat unity or dialectical synthesis. (Inter Alios, Inter Alia: Robert Rehfeldt Between Mail Art and Painting – Christopher Williams-Wynn).